Sibling Assignment 2015.15: My Most Memorable Day in July

Well, we are back to writing another sibling assignment, since it took me a while to write my last one.

This week, brother Bill gave us this assignment:

I think we'd all agree that July, 2015 was a most eventful month for all three of us. 

Choose one day out of this memorable month and focus on it and what happened. Write about why it stands out to you as especially noteworthy. 

I had a lot of memorable days in July, but I will have to go with my 29th anniversary, July 19, 2015, because that is the day Paul, Coco and I walked across the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.

Here is Paul and I before we head across.

Paul and Cosette.

Cosette and I

The view before we head across.  Everyone kept warning us about how foggy it can get, and often you can't see the bridge.  That was not the case on this trip.

Getting ready to walk across.

A view of San Francisco from the bridge.

Paul making sure the cables are strong and secure.  I think they passed inspection.

Here we are, the two love birds, walking hand in hand across the bridge as we celebrate 29 years of marriage.

Looking up at one of the main towers.

Father/Daughter Photo with San Francisco in the background.

Me and my honey.

A view of the bridge from the other side.

The walk across was about a mile and a half one way.

View of the city.

Heading back over to where we started.

A constant flow of traffic on the bridge.

Woo Hoo!!  We made it!!

Golden Gate selfie!!

Walking across one of the most recognizable bridges in the world was something.  We had our first glimpse of the bridge two nights before, and it almost looked fake.  This was our first glimpse

First glimpse of the Golden Gate Bridge.

 

And of course, the whole time we were there, the Tony Bennett hit, "I Left My Heart In San Francisco" kept going through my head.  But the nice thing was, I didn't leave my heart there.  It came with me and walked beside me every step of the way as we rode the "little cable cars that climb halfway to the starts", and felt the "morning fog chill the air, and didn't care".  I also enjoyed the "blue and windy sea" and her "golden sun shone for me" right along side the man who holds my heart.

 

Not really caring that the morning fog is chilling the air.

The blue and windy sea.

Getting to ride the cable car right up to the stars.

 

The golden sun shining (and setting) for me.

 

It was a magical trip, and a magical anniversary.

 

We spent the morning at the apartment we rented in the Richmond District.

 

 

Then we moved into the Hilton Hotel near Union Square to spend the rest of our time in San Francisco.

Then it was off to have some Chinese Food for our Anniversary Dinner.

 

Happy Anniversary to us!!

Coco was the best travel companion.  We had a lot of fun!!!  And she even ate Chinese food!!

The bill came written in Chinese.

Our fortunes.

Learning Chinese and getting our lucky numbers!!

 

 

 

 



So yes, quite a memorable day in San Francisco for our 29th anniversary.  I wonder where we might be as we celebrate number 30 next year?

 

 

And here is one of the most classy entertainers around, singing that song he is famous for...."I Left My Heart In San Francisco".

 

 

Sibling Assignment 2015.14: The Influence of the Turnbow Family on Who We Are #3Siblings

A long time ago, in a galaxy far,
far away....

I gave my two siblings an assignment to write about.

They were prompt, and had their sibling assignment done the week it was assigned.  Christy's blog post is here, and Bill's post is here.

I, apparently, was hit by a ship from the Galactic Empire which threw my ship off course, and I wandered through space for a few weeks.  Often, we aren't aware what can come at us to throw us off course.

For me, it was the death of three people in my life.

In the middle of May, one of my oldest and dearest friends lost her mother to a hard fought battle with cancer.  Janice was a person who was part of my life from practically the beginning of my life.  We were neighbors and her daughter Kellee and I have been friends almost our whole life.  It was hard to say goodbye to Janice, and to see the grief it caused my friend and her family.

Then Ted Turnbow died.  Again, Ted was someone who I had known my entire life.  He and his wife Dorothy were close friends of Mom and Dad, and they were always a part of my life growing up.....as were the whole extended Turnbow family.  Ted was the last of the Turnbow siblings to die. 

And the final death in the short span of time was my Uncle Harry, my dad's only surviving sibling.  Harry lived in Boise, Idaho, and I would try and go see him whenever I was in the area.  Seeing and visiting with Harry was like visiting with a part of my dad.  I was very sad when I heard the news that Uncle Harry had passed away, also from cancer.  I am so glad I was able to see him last November.

So these three deaths really got to me.  They were pieces of my childhood and life growing up that are no longer on this earth. 

But they do remain in our memories, and in our story telling.

That is one of the reasons we do these sibling assignments.  To tell part of our story, and how we remember things growing up together, and our view of the experiences in our lives.

So, I realize this had been a round about way of getting to the assignment, but I felt I needed a little explanation as to my tardiness in completing the assignment I gave.

Here is the assignment:


Since the last of the Turnbow siblings just passed away, I think it would be nice to write a special memory or memories about time spent with this family as we grew up.

My memories of my time spent with the Turnbow family is someone like a collage of memories.  Each are like a flash of time, not a long, drawn out story like my siblings remember. 

Here are some of the flashes of memories I recall from over the years.  I think I have flashes of memories because, unlike my older siblings, when I went to these gatherings, I usually spent time alone.  All of the kids at these gatherings were older.  Even Jerry and Corrine's youngest son, Ted, who was only two years older, was a large expanse of age when you are in grade school.  Plus, he was a boy, I was a girl. 

So a lot of my time was in observing.  Here are some of the observations I remember:

Thanksgiving was at Jerry and Corrine's house.  The men gathered in the living room and watched football.  The women gathered in the kitchen.  LaRue McCoy, Dorothy Turnbow's mother, seemed to always sit at the kitchen nook.  There was a table in the dining room filled with food that people would bring to share.  Coats would go on the bed in Jerry and Corinne's room.  They had a black lab dog named Scuttles I think. 

Fourth of July was always at Rose Lake, and Jerry and Corinne's cabin.  My birthday was on July 3rd, so sometimes my birthday celebration would overlap with the Fourth of July celebration.

Rose Lake

Again, I remember being alone a lot out at Rose Lake.  Occasionally I would find a friend.  Phylis Sawyer and I would hang out some if she was there.  Time at the lake was spent swimming off the dock, sometimes going out on the big pontoon boat.  (My clearest memory of that big boat was throwing up off the side after eating about half a watermelon!!) 

In the evening, the Turnbow brothers and some of their friends would get together and sing.  "Cockles and Mussles" was one I remember.  I know there were others.  Evenings at Rose Lake would include bon fires on the beach roasting hot dogs and marshmallows, and being doused in Off Bug Spray.  Then there would be the fireworks, too, with those of us around the bonfire playing with sparklers.

We didn't go up the river to Cedar Island a whole lot, but one year I have a particular memory of going to Ted and Dorothy's river place that they shared with Jack and Shirley Carney.  They both had trailers.  I remember sitting outside on one of the picnic tables outside the trailers, observing what was going on, and listening to the songs on the radio.  That particular afternoon, Chicago's "Saturday in the Park" started playing on the radio.  Everytime I hear this song, it reminds me of being on Cedar Island, watching Roxanne Ellingson and Kellie Turnbow in their two piece bathing suits getting ready to float the river. 

These Turnbow gatherings were part of what made me the person I am today.  After reading my brother's post, Jerry's youngest son Ted, who now goes by Jeff, said these beautiful words:

"Us Turnbows always felt a sense of inclusion for anyone. My dad and uncles never forgot the poverty they were raised and always taught that human beings were the wealth of ones life, not material or money. My dad Jerry truly loved Kellogg, the valley, the people who lived in the area. I know he tried his best to be the example of the kind of characteristics that make a great human being. It's a time that will never be the same again, but those of us who experienced those days have a responsibility to younger generations to be the example of honesty, loyalty, empathy and acceptance.
Without losing who we are as individuals."

Bill, Christy and myself all were influenced by this family.  How we see the world has been influenced by this family.  Our love of Kellogg and the Silver Valley have been influenced by this family.  And the realization that "human beings are the wealth of ones life, not material or money" is also a part of the influence from this Turnbow clan, who brought my mom and dad and their three kids into their lives to include as part of their family.

Sibling Assignment 2015.13: The Sunnyside Bike Gang #3Siblings

Since our sister Christy will be moving back to the old neighborhood soon here is the assignment:


"Share a memory of  hanging out with people from the 'hood during childhood .

Christy's story is here, and Bill's will soon be here.

My memory involves a certain summer I was in grade school.  It was upper grade school, but I can't remember what summer it was exactly, but if I was to venture a guess, it was 1974 or 1975.

Our "hood" encompassed a rather large area called "Sunnyside".  Our grade school was called Sunnyside and was on the east edge of our neighborhood.

One summer, my friend Kellee Crall and I decided to "hang out" with the Sunnyside Bike Gang.  This was a group of boys in close proximity to our age that would ride their bikes (I am talking Sting Rays, not motorcycles.)  Their hangout was the Mormon Church parking lot on Mission Avenue.

One of the endeavors this "gang" took on that summer was creating "rubber band guns" and
shooting one another with the rubber bands.

 

 

This  photo shows a gun similar to the rubber band guns that were used.  They were rather low tech.  A board, a clothes pin, and some rubber bands.  You loaded the rubber band into the clothes pin, pressed the clothes pin trigger, and off sailed the rubber band to the intended target.

 

I remember Kellee and I going and constructing our own rubber band guns.

 

I'm not sure we ever really were involved in an official rubber band gun war, but we had our weapon just in case.

 

If I remember correctly, some of the members of the bike gang included Richie Poulson, Mike Margason, Joe Margason, Larry Covey and Mouse Covey.  I think the Covey's were living there by this time.  There may have been others, but these are the ones I remember.

 

The bike gang would congregate in the church parking lot after dinner.  During the afternoon, we were all at the Kellogg City Pool spending time swimming.

 

Sounds like a pretty good summer to me.  Days spent swimming at the pool, stopping off at Wee Willie's store for some candy on the way home, or maybe Swansons Grocer, and then, after dinner, jumping on the bike and heading to the church parking lot for some rubber band gun action.

 

That is one of my fond memories of my time in the Sunnyside 'hood.

 

 

Sibling Assignment 2015.12: A Simple Presentation of Ugly-Beautiful #3Siblings

Brother Bill gave us this week's sibling assignment:

 

Since Carol is taking an online photography class, let's do an exercise together.  

1.  Read this article:  http://goo.gl/dGUfB0

2.  Make yourself pause, look, and see and create a well-composed picture following the instruction of Bobby Baker.  In other words, keep the picture simple.  

3.  Write a paragraph about your experience doing this. 

 

You can see Christy's blog post here, and Bill's is here.

 

 

I decided to combine two assignments into one, and not only tried to take a simple picture as described in the article, but I also tried to do the following:

 

In the spirit of elevating the ordinary, today's challenge is to find beauty in an unlikely place. Find the messy, the dirty, the discarded, the forgotten, and transform it with your lens. See it into beauty.

 

I enjoyed walking around my yard looking to capture "ugly-beautiful", while also making it simple by getting the things that may distract from the composition out of the frame.

 

Here is the photo I chose from the more than 160 photos I shot around my yard.

 

I took four photographs of these items, but the reason I chose this one is because I liked that the
focus was on the three upside down solar lights, and peeking from behind is the square vase with a pinecone peaking through.  There is a little bit in the background, but to me, the main focus of this photo are the three solar lights and the vase.

This photo captured the black pot with pinecones in it, and I believe this object became more if the focus.  And the object toward the back became too distracting.

 

 Even with just a little bit of the pinecones showing in the black pot in this shot, it was too distracting.

This shot showed a bit more of what was on the table to the left, plus the top pinecones, and it made the image too busy.

 

Here are more shots I took around my house to capture "ugly-beautiful".

 

You can find them here in my Flickr album.

 

 

Sibling Assignment 2015.11: Smoking, Fights and Grade School Memories #3Siblings

This week I gave the following assignment:

Think back to something that happened when you were a student at Sunnyside Elementary, and why you think that incident has stuck in your memory after all of these years.

Christy's will be here when she posts her assignment, and Bill will have his posted here.

All three of us attended Sunnyside Elementary for grade school.  I attended first through sixth grade there. 

I was actually talking about this particular memory with some friends a couple of weeks ago, and what an impact it made on, not only me, but our whole class at the time.

  Here is a photograph from when it was my grade school.

The incident I remember begins in fifth grade.  Toward the end of the fifth grade year, some fifth and sixth And grade students started going to the back of the playground, by the baseball backstop, and smoking cigarettes during recess.

Someone told on them, and it was rumored that it was my group of friends.

The accusers stuck up for the kids smoking, and my group of friends denied telling.  (To this day, we maintain our innocence in telling.  I'm not sure how the principal found out.  Maybe one day he looked across the playground and saw smoke billowing out of the group of students standing in a group by the baseball backstop.  I don't know!)

So a divide was made.  I remember a girl from my group of friends got in a fist fight with a girl from the "other" group.  Tensions were high, as least that is the way it seemed to my fifth grade memory.

When we returned to school the following fall, in sixth grade, more students joined us from Elk Creek School, but the lines between the two group remained the same.  We got a long better in sixth grade, but it was interesting how, as we grew older, the two groups remained separate, even on through junior high and high school.

I am not sure if the cigarette smoking had anything to do with it.  These lines may have been drawn anyway.  But I often look back at that time, and that incident, and thought it was interesting how that effected our friendships from that point on into junior high, high school, and beyond.

I think I remember this, because it created such a dynamic in our class at the time.  I think even the class above us was affected as well.

If any of you reading this were in school with me at Sunnyside during fifth or sixth grade, and remember this any differently let me know.  I would be curious to know how others looked at this incident.  One friend of mine remembers it the same way I did.  Another friend has no memory of it whatsoever.  So leave me a comment if you remember anything.

Sibling Assignment 2015.10: The Beauty of My Hometown #3Siblings

This week Christy gave us our Sibling Assignment.

When you want to surround  yourself with beauty, where do you go? Take five pictures of that place and share your thought on it's beauty.

Christy's post about "What I Will Leave Behind" is here, and Bill's post will be here soon.

I am going to share about the beauty that is right outside my front door, here in my hometown of Kellogg, Idaho.  I didn't take photos this week for the assignment, but rather I am using photos from last summer I took when I realized how much beauty was so close to my front door.


Last summer we didn't travel anywhere during the summer, so I did a series on "Vacation at Home", and took some little hikes around Kellogg that were all no more than 15 minutes from my house.




This photo was taken after walking up behind Kellogg High School.  I graduated from KHS, and now that is where I go to work each day.  It is a beautiful setting for a high school.

Down the road from KHS, by Shoshone Medical Center, there is a walking path that takes you up to the top of the hill where you get this magnificent view of Kellogg.

This is what it looks like walking up the trail from the hospital, before you get to the top.

If you walk down Bunker Avenue, past Kellogg Middle School, there is a trail along the South Fork of the Coeur d'Alene River, to the west of the school.  This is a view of the river as you walk along the trail.

This is taken along a trail on the north side of the river.  There is a trail on both side of this river, and it is a nice walk to enjoy some beauty of the South Fork.

Kellogg is a beautiful place to live, surrounded by mountains, rivers, lakes and streams.

 

I love the beauty of this area.

 



So for me, if I want to surround myself with beauty, I only have to walk out my front door.

Sibling Assignment 2015.9 The Important Thing That Has Slipped Away

After a bit of a hiatus with the sibling assignments, brother Bill assigned the following assignment:

Do you have anything in your life that you've not been doing that you used to a lot more of?  In other words, have you let something important in your life slip away -- maybe not completely, but more than you'd like in a perfect world.

 

Write about it -- why it matters to you, how you miss it, and how you think you'll go about getting back to it.

I am getting an early start on my blog post this week.  You will find Bill's post here, and Christy's blog post is here.

 

This was an easy one to pinpoint in my life.

 

Researching and writing a book.

 

That is that something in my life, something important in my life, that I have let slip away, definitely more than I would like.

 

I was reminded of this last Friday when I was at a Pampered Chef party.  I used to sell Pampered Chef, and one of the parties I was a consultant for was the friend who was having the party last Friday.  I met a woman at that party about 10 years ago, and she asked me if I was still working on my book.  She remembered.

 

I often run into people who ask me this question.  And it makes me feel like a failure. I hate that!!

 

The premise of my book, or actually books, is great.  It is a historical fiction novel series about the Silver Valley.  The first book has the three main characters, a mining lawyers daughter, an Italian immigrant, and a Coeur d'Alene tribal member all meeting on the lawn of the Cataldo Mission when they are all about 14 years old, in the year 1888.

 

The first book focuses on the girl, and her life moving from back east to Wallace, Idaho, and her life in this new mining town.  The Italian boy's family came this way, because the father was working on building the railroad.  After that job is done, his father gets a job in a local mine, as does the son, eventually. 

 

The book opens with the girl seeing a train full of local miners wearing hoods, and heading west toward Kellogg.  The year is 1899.  The girls sees a scar on the arm off one of the miners, and knows it is her Italian friend.  These men are heading west toward Kellogg to blow up the Bunker Hill mine mill.

 

This is a photograph taken of the men who were put in the "bull pen", a makeshift prison that men suspected of blowing up the Bunker Hill Mine Mill were put in to after the 1899 explosion.

Then the scene goes back to 1888, when the three friends meet on the lawn of the Cataldo Mission, and how there lives continue to intertwine, while telling the colored history of the beginning of the Coeur d'Alene Mining District, which is now known as the Silver Valley.

 

The second book begins with blowing up the mill, and the main character is the Italian Immigrant.  This covers the next ten years, from 1899 to 1910, the year of the largest forest fire in U.S. history, occurring right in and around Wallace, Idaho.

 

The final book focuses on the Coeur d'Alene tribal member, and begins with the aftermath of the fire, and goes until about 1920.

 

Personally, I think it is a great story, and I have done a lot of research.  But life got in the way.  I am not one of those people who are disciplined enough to write late into the night.  Especially when I was raising a family.

 

But, times are different now.  Paul and I are practically empty nesters.  So now, I am hoping I can take the time to get back into writing the first book.  To reacquaint myself with the girl from Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, the boy from Italy, and the Native American, who was born into a peaceful tribe who roamed the lands of what is now Washington, Idaho and Montana.

 

And, if you want to help me with this project, ask me about my book.  Talk to me about the story.  Encourage me to keep writing.  That is what will help me get this story down on paper, and one day, hopefully, get it published.